Trinity Baptist Church

 

Our text this evening is Matthew 5:33-37. Let's read the text and then I'll give you some setting for the text, and we'll go right in to it.

 

Text

 

Before we look at the passage specifically, let me give you some background as a setting of context for your understanding of what our Lord is saying. Matthew is the gospel of the King. In it, Matthew focuses on presenting Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Anointed, the monarch of God. All the way through, as you study the book of Matthew, you see this constant focus on the kingliness of Jesus Christ. 

 

Matthew was originally writing to a primarily Jewish audience to let them know that they had, in fact and in deed, executed their own Messiah, the King. There are three, great, sweeping themes concerning the King in Matthew. 

The first one is that the King is revealed. 

 

For example, His ancestry is traced from a royal line. His birth is dreaded by a rival king. Wise men offer Him kingly honor and royal gifts. A royal herald proclaims His coming. Even His temptation reaches its climax as He is offered the kingdoms of the world, so that Satan even recognizes His kingliness. 

 

He then proclaims the manifesto of His Kingdom, setting forth for His subjects the righteous standards. 

His miracles are His royal credentials. His parables are called the mysteries of His Kingdom. He is hailed as the son of David. He claims freedom as a child of a king. He makes a royal entry into Jerusalem, and claims sovereignty. He tells, concerning Himself, the story of a king's son. While facing death on the cross, He predicts His future reign. He claims the power to command the legions of angels. His last words are a kingly claim, "All authority is given unto me," and a royal command, "Go ye, therefore, and make disciples." So, from beginning to end in Matthew's gospel, we see the King revealed. 

Secondly, we see the King rejected. 

 

Interwoven with the first theme is the second, and from the very beginning to the very end, they run concurrently. For example, even before Jesus was born, His mother was in danger of being rejected by her own husband. 

 

At His birth, all Jerusalem was troubled and Herod sought to kill Him. Soon after His birth, the angel choir was silent, and all that could be heard in the hills of Bethlehem was the weeping and wailing of mothers who were sobbing over the deaths of their children who had been slaughtered. He was hurried away for His life to live for 30 years in the obscurity of a nondescript, off the road village called Nazareth, a place where He Himself knew no honor. His forerunner was imprisoned and beheaded, and He Himself had nowhere to lay His head. 

 

His parables indicated that His Kingdom would not be accepted in His own time, and even on the cross, He cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" 

 

There is no penitent thief praying in Matthew, there is no word of human sympathy spoken, and those who pass by His cross in Matthew's gospel mock and revile and jeer. Even the soldiers are paid to lie about His resurrection. In no other gospel is the attack so constant and bitter. Matthew reveals the King and then shows the rejection. 

 

The great glory of the gospel of Matthew is the third theme, and that is

 

the King returning. 

 

All through Matthew, there is a focus on a day coming when majesty will belong to whom it belongs, and the King will reign. No other gospel lays so much emphasis on the Second Coming, so it ends as a gospel of great and glorious triumph. 

 

 

Now this morning, we are in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, the manifesto of the King. Here, the King is saying, "These are the conditions for belonging to My Kingdom. These are the qualities of life that My Kingdom demands. This is the nature of My reign and rule in the world." 

 

It is not an easy-going talk; it is not socialistic, pious platitudes. It is a confrontive, bold, stark definition of the inadequacies of human religion. It is a blast at all that Judaism was. 

It is a stripping bare of the phoniness of the Pharisees and the hypocrisies of those who followed their lies. 

 

That is in all probability the primary crowd that is gathered on the hillside in Galilee where Jesus was preaching. Mostly, he is directing his comments at the Pharisees and the scribes. The Pharisees were a legalistic, ritualistic sect of Jews; the scribes were those who wrote down and copied the law. 

 

Together, they formed a kind of union of legalists, and between the two of them, based on years of rabbinical teaching and tradition, they had invented a substitute for being right with God that was loosely based on the Mosaic Law.

 

The fact is in the Old Testament, God had set a high standard; He had set down His divine law. But in reality, the Jews had descended far away from God's law. They did not desire to go to God to receive grace for salvation; they wanted to attain it themselves, in their own pride, but they could not attain to the law of God as God defined it. 

 

So they invented a sub-standard, a man-made system of their own designing. Then, they said, "If you keep that, you're alright." So in keeping that, they established their own self-righteousness, but it was not God's law. 

 

That is why, beginning in Matthew 5:21, six times Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said by them of old, but I say unto you." In other words, "Your system has told you this, but I'm telling you this." In each of the six illustrations, Jesus lifts the standard back to where it belonged. 

Some people assume that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is adding to the Old Testament; He's not. Other people assume He's taking away from the Old Testament; He's not. What He is simply doing is reestablishing the biblical standard over against their sub-standard system.

 

"You have heard that it was said by them of old," is in verses 21, 27, 31, 33, 38, and 43. He is contrasting their system with God's truth, and in each case, He reveals them as sinners. They had thought that because they didn't kill, they were alright. He says, "But you hate, and that's murder in your heart." They had thought that because they didn't commit adultery, they were alright. He says, "You commit it in your heart, and it's just the same." They had thought that because they did the paperwork in their divorces, they were alright. He says, "When you divorce for other than fornication, you make everyone an adulterer." 

 

He said, "God is concerned with your hearts, not your external system. You are sinners; your hearts are angry and hateful. Your hearts are lustful, and your adulteries are multitudinous through your illegitimate, unbiblical divorces.

 

Now He comes to a fourth illustration of their sinfulness in verse 33. 

 

Here He says, "You think you're telling the truth, but I'm telling you you're nothing but a group of liars." That's the thrust of it. You see, the key to what He says in the Sermon on the Mount is in verse 20; that sums up the whole of chapter 5. 

 

 

He says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. The standard of the scribes and Pharisees is too low." 

 

The scribes and Pharisees were so pious, they were looking for a vacancy in the Trinity. In their own minds, they had elevated themselves to that level. 

 

But He says, "No, you don't belong in My Kingdom." I know they thought that when the Messiah came, He'd just kind of grab them all in a big group and scoop them into the Kingdom and appoint them all to places of leadership, but He says, "You don't even belong there. My standard is far beyond yours. 

 

How high is My standard?" Look at Matthew 5:48, "Be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. To be in My Kingdom, you have to be perfect." 

 

You say, "Who qualifies?" The answer is, "Nobody. Nobody on his own terms, by the effort of human achievement, on a system of self-righteousness, can get into My Kingdom. You can't attain that perfection." 

 

From where does that perfection come? It is imputed to you by faith in Jesus Christ. The perfection that you have to have to be in His Kingdom and can't attain is a gift of His grace. 

 

What Jesus was trying to do in the sermon was to get them to realize that they hadn't made it, and to look to a Redeemer. Then, as He offered Himself, He would be the solution to the very problem He had brought to their minds. 

 

Let's look specifically at verses 33-37 to see how Jesus confronts them about the lying hearts that they are masking with their supposed self-righteousness. 

 

By the way, this passage may at first seem somewhat obscure, and we tend to pass by it and not pay a lot of attention to it.

 

But let me give you a little hint to understanding this section: Whenever the Bible talks about the tongue, or about what you say, you ought to stop and study it, and you ought to master it. 

 

James says, "If any man can control his tongue, the same is a perfect man." That's the heart of the matter, "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," says Matthew 12:34. Matthew 15:18 says, "Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man." 

 

In other words, you need to learn that what you say is a vital thing because it is nothing but the thermometer of the heart. Whenever the Bible talks about speech or the tongue, you ought to listen.

 

It is very practical. I trust that God will speak to our hearts as we see what He is saying.

 

There are three things to see in the text; let's look at them. I am taking the same approach as I did to divorce. 

 

Number one, the principles of Mosaic law. Number two, the perversion of Jewish tradition. Number three, the perspective of divine teaching. 

Number one, the principles of Mosaic law. 

 

You'll notice that it says in verse 33, "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.'" 

 

That statement is not included in the Old Testament. It was kind of a composite statement of their Jewish tradition. But it is based upon Old Testament reality, for oaths are a part of the Old Testament. 

 

Notice the word 'oath' and notice the word 'perjure.' Both come from the same root, the word 'swear' in verse 34 is a synonym. Swearing, oaths, and perjury basically all come from the same thing. An oath is simply this: it is making a statement and calling God to witness to the truth of that statement, and invoking a curse from God if, in fact, you're not telling the truth.

 

We do it today when we say, "I swear to God that's the truth." You go into court, and you put your hand on a Bible, and say, "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." 

 

When you get married, you say, "Before God and these witnesses, I take you," and you are invoking God as a witness to the voracity of a lifelong vow that you are making. 

 

This had been a part of Jewish society from the earliest part of the Old Testament. 

 

 

 

The Greek word for 'oath,' has the idea of binding something, or strengthening it, so that your word is then strengthened in the affirmation of invoking God to attest to the validity of your word.

 

Look for a moment at Hebrews 6:16, and I'll show you perhaps the best biblical definition of an oath. God is giving this tremendous promise of a new covenant, and in verse 16, God wanted to verify the validity of His word. Of course, God never tells a lie, but God accommodated Himself to the human mode, the human way, as He does in so many ways at so many other times. 

 

It says, "For men indeed swear by the greater." In other words, when a man wants to swear, or make an oath, or confirm his word, He will call God, who is the greater, to attest to the truthfulness of it. So men will swear by a greater. "And they make an oath for confirmation for them, as an end of all dispute." 

 

In other words, two people have a conflict, and one promises to fulfill something that will resolve the conflict, and in order to end the conflict and secure the confidence of the other person, he affirms the truth by calling God to witness.     

 

Verse 17 shows, interestingly, that even God did this. "Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath." 

 

In other words, God wanted to accommodate men and show them the immutability, or the unchanging character, of His own promise, and also made an oath. 

When God makes an oath, He doesn't make an oath by anyone greater than Himself, but what you find throughout the Old Testament is this statement, "'As I live,' says the Lord, 'I will,'" and then comes the statement. In other words, God makes an oath on Himself.

 

The point is this: God realizes men are sinners, and He realizes that they need an affirmation of their truthfulness. They need something fearful to bind them to speak the truth in serious settings. 

 

Did you know there are times when God says, "Verily I say to you," and there are times when the Lord said, "Verily, verily I say to you," and someone said to me one time, "When God says, 'Verily, verily,' are those the times He really means it?" When God says, "Verily, verily," He really means it. When He says, "Verily," He means it, and when He doesn't say, "Verily," at all, He means it. Those are merely for emphasis.

 

That is the reason God makes an oath; not because you have to have an oath from Him to trust Him, but simply to emphatically state the urgency and the singular significance of that which He has said, setting it apart from other things. So we see, then, that an oath is simply calling God to testify to the truth of something.

 

By the way, in the theocracy of Israel, where God ruled and the people feared God, this was a good way to bind men's word. We live in a society today where people don't keep their word. I read an article not long ago that asked the question, "Do you know how many peace treaties in the history of the world have been broken?" 

All of them. Men break their promises, and they need something fearful to hold them to it, so God allowed them to draw His name into it. 

 

In Genesis 24:2-3, Abraham made an oath. In Genesis 26:28-29, Isaac made an oath. In Genesis 31:44, Jacob made an oath. Jonathan makes an oath to David in I Samuel 20:16; David makes an oath in II Samuel 19:23 and following. The greatest men of God, there they are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jonathan, David, and those are only samples. 

 

They covenanted with someone to the truthfulness of their statement by calling God to witness it, and saying, in effect, "God, if I'm telling a lie, You bring Your vengeance on me." 

 

When you said, "Before God and these witnesses," at your marriage, that's what you meant - "Lord, I'll stay with this person until I die, or else, You deal with me." That's the way they did it then.

 

There were times in the Old Testament when God asked for an oath to be taken. In Numbers 30:2, it says, "If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth." 

 

And then He goes on to talk about when and the conditions that these oaths are to be made, they are to be fulfilled. In other words, God says, "Do this, and when you do it, mean it and keep it." 

 

 

 

 

God knows men are sinners. God knows that the basic lying nature of men causes them to distrust each other, and in serious situations, there will be necessary oaths taken. He allows for that, He Himself doing it by example. 

 

Let me show you an example of someone who did it and didn't keep it, someone who lied with an oath. 

 

You'll remember the story; this is Peter. This gives us an idea of how oaths were taken. This case unfortunately happens to be a negative one, but it will make its point anyway.

 

In Matthew 26:69, Peter sat outside the court while Jesus was being tried on the inside, having been taken in the Garden as a prisoner and preparing to be crucified. "And a servant girl came to him, saying, 'You also were with Jesus of Galilee.' But he denied it before them all, saying, 'I do not know what you are saying.'" So first, he just says, "I don't know what you're talking about." 

 

Then, "when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, 'This fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth.' But again he denied with an oath, 'I do not know the Man!'" 

 

So this time, he uses an oath. Now he literally says, "God is my witness that I don't know Christ." Oh, Peter, it's bad to lie. It's double-bad to call God to witness to your lie. Triple-bad is coming up. 

 

 

 

"And a little later those who stood by came up and said to Peter, 'Surely you also are one of them, for your speech betrays you.'" They're saying, "You have a Galilean accent; we can pick you out." 

 

So, "He began to curse and swear, saying, 'I do not know the Man!'" This isn't profanity, dirty talk, filthy, obscene language. He is saying, "God is my witness! May God curse me, I swear to God I don't know!" That's what he's doing. 

 

That helps explain why, when the cock crowed, he wept bitterly. It was bad enough to lie, but worse to confirm your lie by invoking God as a witness to its truthfulness, and then to swear to God and call down a curse from Heaven if you're lying. 

 

Oh, Peter. Peter, you coward. I'd imagine that all the tears he shed never washed his soul of the memory of those lies.

 

So oaths were not uncommon. The supreme oath in the Old Testament was, "As the Lord lives," to confirm words. "As I live," says the Lord in Genesis 22:16, "I swear by My own name." Always two things in the Old Testament: swearing only in God's name, and only for very special occasions. Get those two; that's what the Old Testament taught. 

 

So that is the principle of the Mosaic law. 

 

Secondly, the perversion of rabbinic tradition. 

 

Verse 33 sounds good, "You shall not perjure yourself, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." That sounds great, but like everything else they did, it is an illusion. 

There are two things that I want to call to your attention here. One is a missing ingredient.

 

The missing ingredient is this:. It says, "You shall not perjure yourself, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." 

 

The missing ingredient in their system was that it never told them when oaths were proper, so you might say that the missing ingredient lead to frivolous swearing. They were swearing oaths for every little thing throughout every day. They were swearing by this, and swearing by that, and swearing to this, and swearing to that, all the time swearing oaths indiscriminately, taking them as a common matter of conversation. 

 

We have information, as we look back into some of the ancient writings, that they used them constantly for everything. 

 

You can see that in the statement in verse 33, there is no qualification. It just says, "Be sure when you perform an oath to the Lord that you keep it." 

 

It doesn't say anything about when you should do that, so they were just swearing by everything. Of course, that drew people in. If a guy came up to you and said, "I want you to know, my friend, that I will keep my word to you. I swear by Heaven and Earth, and I swear by my head, and I swear by Jerusalem, and I swear by the altar, and I swear by the temple that I'll do it," you'd probably say, "Alright." 

 

And then he'd go right out and not do it. They'd swear by everything. 

 

The second thing is not only a missing ingredient, but a misplaced emphasis. 

 

Notice the phrase, "Unto the Lord." That was their little catch. As long as you swore unto the Lord, you had to do it. But if you swore to anything else, you didn't have to. 

 

Remember when you were a little kid? "I know I told you that, but I had my fingers crossed!" That's exactly what they were doing. That's what they were playing. "If you don't swear to the Lord, you don't have to keep it." So they would swear by Heaven, Earth, Jerusalem, their head, the temple, and just go out and do the very opposite. They didn't have any impunity at all, no sense of guilt, because they didn't swear by the name of the Lord, and all it did was make a network of lies going everywhere.

 

For example, Leviticus 19:12 says, "You shall not swear by My name falsely." The emphasis is that you shouldn't swear falsely. But their emphasis is, "You shouldn't swear by His name falsely." See the difference? 

 

In Numbers 30:2, "When a man makes a vow to Jehovah, or swears an oath, he shall not break his word." They read it this way, "When a man makes a vow to Jehovah, he shall not break his word." Otherwise, you could break it.

 

You see, if you're going to be righteous on your own, and make yourself righteous, you have to invent a system you can keep. So they wanted to lie because they were liars, and sinners can't help lying, so they just fit their lies into a nice, comfortable category. 

If you didn't say 'in the Lord's name,' you could lie and it was OK. That's how they twisted the Scriptures.

 

Watch how Jesus deals with this; I love this. 

 

Verse 34. "But I say to you, do not swear at all," which really means, "Stop swearing like that!" 

 

You can't swear by Heaven and avoid God; that's God's throne. Or by earth, you can't avoid Him there either - that's His footstool. Or by Jerusalem, you can't avoid Him there, that's the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black." 

 

Now that was before Clairol, we'll have to agree to that. But what He is saying is this: God is in control of your head. Whenever you touch Heaven, you touch God. Whenever you touch earth, you touch God. Touch Jerusalem, touch your head, and you touch God; He is all and in all. 

 

You can' avoid God; there aren't any little compartments where you can lie over here and speak the truth over here. There is no sacred and secular; there is no way to evade it. You can't tell the truth in church and lie in your business; you can't separate those categories. God is all and in all, and whenever you vow a vow and swear to tell the truth, you invoke God.

 

This thing had become so complex that Jesus had to deal with it later, and He gave them another good shot in Matthew 23:16. Look at it. "Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing.'" 

"But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.' Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.' Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it." 

 

Whew! That's straight stuff.

 

Isn't it amazing what a system they had invented? They were playing footsie with all these objects, and they wanted to con someone by saying, "I swear by the altar in the holy temple." The guy would say, "That's straight up for me, you're a Jewish leader." But it didn't count. Here they were, trying to purport to everyone in the world that they were righteous. Jesus says, "You're liars to the core, and your system only betrays the reality of your rotten hearts."

 

William Barclay says so well, "Here is a great eternal truth: light cannot be divided into compartments in some of which God is involved, and in others of which He is not involved. There cannot be one kind of language in the church and another kind of language in the home. There cannot be one kind of standard of conduct in the church and another standard of conduct in the business world. The fact is that God does not need to be invited into certain departments of life and kept out of others;

 

He is everywhere, all through life, and every activity of life. He hears not only the words which are spoken in His name, He hears all words, and there cannot be any such thing as a form of words which evades bringing God into any transaction. We will regard all promises as sacred if we remember that all promises are made in the presence of God."

 

Half-truths are whole lies. The Bible says that you are not to lie. 

 

There are six things the Lord hates, even seven. The first is a proud look and the second is a lying tongue. 

 

Proverbs 12:22 says, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord." 

 

Psalm 58:3 says, "The wicked go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." 

 

In Psalm 64:2, he says, "The wicked delight in lies." 

 

Jeremiah 9 says the world lies; in Jeremiah 23, it says that false prophets lie. In Isaiah 57, hypocrites lie. In I Timothy 4, apostates lie. What is the end of all liars? All liars shall find their part in the lake of fire, which burns forever (Revelation 21-22). 

 

Jesus is saying, "You can't be in My Kingdom if you're indicted on all these counts of lying." They were liars; they couldn't have been in their Kingdom on their own, they would have to have those lies washed in the blood of Christ to get into His Kingdom. 

 

 

 

So our Lord destroys their system, tears their elaborate cloak of cover, and reveals the truth.

That leads us to the third point. From the principles of Mosaic law, and the perversion of Jewish tradition, we come to

 

the perspective of divine teaching. 

 

What is Jesus teaching here? I believe He is simply reaffirming the Old Testament standard. What was it? 

 

Two things govern oaths: don't use them frivolously, but only for special occasions; and only swear by the name of God. He deals with the second one first, in verse 34. 

 

"Swear not at all by heaven, or by earth, or by Jerusalem, or by your head." In other words, He is not forbidding swearing totally, like the Quakers have taught; I don't believe that's what He's saying. 

 

Why? Because if God took an oath, and if God reiterated that oath in Hebrews 6 in the new covenant, and if Jesus, in His trial, was confronted, and they said to Him, "I adjure you by the living God," and at that point, His silence was broken and He answered. Why? Because He had been called into oath; Jesus responded to an oath. 

 

If the Apostle Paul, in Romans 9:1, says, "I speak the truth in Christ; I lie not. The Holy Spirit bears me witness," if Paul takes oaths in the epistles (and that's only one of many), if Jesus takes an oath at His trial, if God takes an oath in Hebrews 6, and if Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, "I came not to destroy the law," and in verse 19, "No one is to break the least of these commandments," then believe me, there is still a place for those kind of oaths.

So He is not removing it all, He is saying, "Swear not at all in the manner to which you have become accustomed, evasively trying to cover your lies, because it is God who touches every place in His universe." 

 

Secondly, He says, "You'd better keep it for solemn occasions. You'd better not do it as a way of life; that just shows you come from the evil one." 

 

Verse 37, "But let your communication," and He uses the simplest Greek word for conversation that there is, logos. Let your routine conversation, your daily communication, be just, "Yes, yes," and, "No, no." If it's any more than that, you simply show the evil source of your heart. 

 

What He's saying is, "Keep it for those times when it is needful, when invoking God's name is a right thing because of the seriousness of the matter.

 

 But on other occasions, in your normal routine, and by the way, that word is translated in the New Testament probably 50 times as 'common speech,' just the word 'speech.' "Let your normal speech be that 'yes' means 'yes,' and 'no' means 'no.' That way, you don't have to swear by anything, because your word is your bond." So Jesus is merely reiterating what I said at the beginning, the two Old Testament standards.

 

That's what God wants. There are times in our lives when we can take a vow.  

 

 

It is reserved for those times of extreme and significant importance for a promise we will never break. . 

 

When I married my wife, I made a promise before God, and called Him to witness that promise that I would spend my life with my wife. I'll keep that promise; she knows that I'll keep that promise. That makes marriage a lot easier, when you both know you'll keep that promise until you die. 

 

That's not for everyday conversation. And I’ll tell you something: If my conversation is so suspect every day that I have to make vows to God that I'm telling the truth, then there is something wrong in my life, right? You should be able to trust what I say. What is this message saying to you this morning?

 

If you're a non-Christian, what it's saying to you is that you may think you're OK, but you're not. God is a holy God; to be in His Kingdom, He demands righteousness. You can't be righteous. You may think you tell the truth, but you shade it; you cheat, you dodge here and there, you tell half-truths, you make excuses, you betray a confidence. 

 

We all have that lying in us from our sin nature, and Jesus is saying to them and to you today, "If you see it there and know it hasn't been dealt with, you need to come to Jesus Christ, who alone can give you the righteousness you must have but can't gain on your own."

 

 

 

 

If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, then Christ will give you His righteousness and you'll be as perfect as God is perfect, as His righteousness is imputed to you. By simply receiving Christ, His righteousness becomes yours. 

 

What does it say to Christians? If you're a Christian and a child of the King, you should live like one. He is the Father of truth, so when we open our mouths, the truth ought to come out. On those solemn occasions when we vow a vow to God, we ought to keep that vow. On those other occasions, in the daily matters of life, our 'yes' should be 'yes,' and our 'no' should be 'no.' Anything more than that reveals an evil, untrustworthy heart.

 

Beloved, let's start a new movement in the world, a truth movement. Wouldn't it be great? Let's keep the vows we've made that demanded an oath before God; let's keep them for our lifetimes. In our daily conversation, let's speak the truth, the real truth, and live it. Let's be an oasis in the midst of the evil of this world of lying. Let's pray.